Fear
by p-e-n-n-n-a-m-e
Summary: Here is Hawkeye's response to Madison's letter. I thought she deserved one. I'm really interested to hear what you have to say about it.
1. Default Chapter

Author's note: This is really an entry about September Eleventh. If you don't want to read about it, don't continue. It's only related to MASH because it is a letter being written to a character from MASH. Most of the content of the letter is unrelated to said television show. I hope this doesn't offend anybody. I don't think it will, but I say that just in case. I just felt like I had to write this so I did. Feel free to respond to it in the reviews section.  
  
Dear Grandpa,  
  
I have a quick temper; a short fuse. Something my father says I get from my you (and he should know!). It's not like I have an anger management problem or anything. I'm just intense. Sometimes I get that feeling like I just need to go into an open field and scream it all out. Yell, kick, jump up and down, let it go. It's just that there are no more open fields in suburban Long Island, especially in my county (close to the city). Today was one of those days.  
  
What made me so angry?  
  
I forgot the date.  
  
I had to look at my watch to remember the date, and I wanted to scream. Right there in the middle of my statistics class.  
  
I forgot it was September Eleventh.  
  
Oh my God. I forgot the day I swore I'd never forget. The day I remember in passing sometimes, when I feel that first cool breeze of fall, or when I hear God Bless America (A song I never knew until that year). The day that thrust into my naive adolescent face the reality of human mortality. The images that make me nauseous. The smells that made me sick. The sound of sobs that tore a hole in my heart. I forgot it. And it makes me feel guilty.  
  
I was in tenth grade. In my English class. In one of those strange ironies of life we were writing a "free response" on what scares us the most. Then we found out something happened. But we didn't know what.  
  
In choir someone told us it had to do with the twin towers.  
  
In Chem. someone told me that some psycho had flown a plane into one of them. I didn't believe her. Can you believe it? I didn't. It was nightmarish. It was a nightmare. It was a Harrison Ford movie minus Harrison Ford and the happy ending. We ran to watch on television. In horror we say them both come down.  
  
We saw the people jumping from the upper levels. We saw the building swallow the plane, and then implode. It's making me shake to remember.  
  
What about the bridges? Someone asked. We suddenly felt vulnerable. We're trapped here. Long Island is an Island, locked by water. What ifs were running rampant.  
  
Teleban, Osama Bin Laden, terrorism. All foreign words; all taking on a new meaning.  
  
And then there were those trying to contact parents. Some never did.  
  
I felt guilty to cry. What right did I have to be crying when other people had really been affected. I didn't loose anyone. But what right did I have to be laughing? To smile? To be happy? When so many were suffering.  
  
That was Tuesday. On Thursday they made another announcement. Suddenly announcements made everyone tense up. The smell that you're smelling won't harm you, they said, it's from the Twin Towers.  
  
Then I really lost it. It smelled like an electrical fire. I just kept thinking how I was smelling all those who had lost their lives, and I lost it.  
  
I t was a horrible year. With the discoveries of people who had left messages saying good-bye once they knew there was no chance of survival. The firefighters who went in to save people and became victims. The police detectives, who had to be called in to ID the bodies. President Bush made his first trip to New York City, and Mayor Gulianni showed the world how strong New York could be.  
  
I went to the second Yankee game, after they reopened the parks for play, and I remember a moment of science so silent, that it burned my eyes and ears. Thousands of people fell silent. Remembering.  
  
Later that spring, when I went to that ball game in Baltimore, where the moment of science at 9:11 pm was less than silent. I was so angry. You weren't there. I wanted to scream at the crowd. You're not from New York. You don't know!  
  
On Long Island we call New York The City. Simply that. Because there is only one city to us and New York is it. We never take the train to New York City, we take it to The City. You have to go through The City to get to The Mainland, so when The City was attacked, we felt we'd been attacked.  
  
I watched the news the other night, and one of the panelists made a crack about 9/11. First of all, I feel that the people who died that day deserve more than 9/11. They deserve September Eleventh. Second of all, he's not from New York. What does he know? Bush isn't from New York. What does he know? What gave him the right to play off our fear for his war?  
  
There is so much to be angry about it's overwhelming. But that anger hides fear. A fear so deep that it's like nothing I've ever felt before. Why did the terrorists use passenger jets? Wasn't it bad enough they wanted to kill themselves? Did they have to bring those others with them? Why innocents? Why? It makes me afraid. They didn't know they were going to die. It makes me so afraid.  
  
It's not just me who's afraid. Last year we had a bomb threat, but they didn't tell us that was what was going on. The announcement said, everyone calmly get your things and go home. People were immediately on cell phones, trying to find out what happened. We went to my house and watched the news for two hours, all different stations, before we finally realized that the problem was only within our town.  
  
Grandpa, I'm scared. What I see scares me. I know I've talked to you about this on the phone, but sometimes it's better to write it out. If I forgot September Eleventh on the second anniversary. What are my kids going to think of it? What If I never make it that far? I always used to think America was safe. Our ocean's protected us. We went to war, but war never came to us. I don't understand it, Grandpa, I don't.  
  
I don't know what I want to hear from you. I guess that everything will be all right, and that we can all go back to who we were. I know that will never happen. You know it too. Maybe that's why I'm writing to you. You must understand what I'm talking about since you were in Korea; that feeling of hopelessness, of fear, and of a total lack of control over your future. It makes me feel claustrophobic. Like I can never escape the uncertainty that my world has become. I know you'll understand that too.  
  
Maybe that's why I'm writing to you, because you understand. Even though you way up there, you still understand. I guess I just need to hear that. Thank you for listening. Well, reading.  
  
Your granddaughter,  
  
Madison Pierce 


	2. Dear Madison,

This is Hawkeye's reply to Madison's letter. I thought she deserved one. Please respond. The subject is kind of dark but really important, I think anyway. Tell me if you think I should write more.  
  
Dear Madison,  
  
I don't know whether you were expecting a reply, or just writing to write. When I was in Korea I wrote countless letters to my father, most of which were more for my own sanity than his edification. There's something about writing that helps to delineate a problem. And once you can figure out what the problem is you can attempt to solve it. Now I sound like my favorite psychiatrist; Sidney Freedman. You know, even he wrote a letter once; to Sigmund Freud. At least you wrote a letter to a person who is still alive.  
  
I can understand your fear. That's the last thing you're supposed to say to someone but I really do understand. The closest experience I can say I've had to what you've been going through was Pearl Harbor, and I was 15. Even then the attack was far away. It didn't touch me. I wasn't of draft-able age, I had no brothers, and it was halfway around the world from Crabapple Cove. I never smelled it.  
  
I was always very concerned for the soldiers who had to fight. But it seemed like they had a clear purpose. Maybe they didn't think they did. I don't know, really. All I know is that I pretty much made it to 25 without having to feel that pain of loss, fear, and uncertainty on a global level.  
  
When you're a kid, you're supposed to feel invincible. You're climbing up the right side of that bell-shaped curve. You're not supposed to fear death. You realize it could happen, but it's supposed to seem far away.  
  
That's how I think you're generation is going to be different from mine. Or at least people like you in your generation. We had that respite, despite a war. We had our chance at invincibility that September Eleventh took away from you. You have no right to feel what you're feeling at your age. No right.  
  
Once I went to Korea, I began to really understand death. I stared it in the eye. I challenged it to duels; I dared Death to take away my patients. And sometimes it did. I began to realize that not only was I not invincible, but I couldn't make anyone else invincible. "Some patients insist on dying, Hawk. You knew that going in. And you had to be a doctor anyway."  
  
It was this discovery of death that helped to contribute to that breakdown I had. It had a lot to do with the baby, but it had more to do with death. I couldn't take it anymore. What was the point? If little and big lives were taken so haphazardly? And the most distressing thought of all was that none of it even mattered. I could work, and work, and once a person was gone they were gone. Forever. And forever is a really long time. Forever scared me. Because one day, I was beginning to realize, it could be me who was leaving forever. And that thought petrified me.  
  
I was about 27 when I first began wrestling with this concept in full. It's a difficult concept to grasp, and one that can lead to some very down days. I still wonder about it now; about 50 years, a wife, 3 kids, and 10 grandkids latter. It still hurts me in a place I can't quite put my finger on when I think of all those who never did make it.  
  
I have figured something out - and I figured it out in Korea - life goes in cycles. There were times when I just couldn't face another body, another bomb, another box of personal affects. I couldn't imagine that I would ever live to 30. There were good cycles when I just couldn't stop laughing, babies were born, people gave selflessly, and I couldn't imagine not making it to 30.  
  
The same thing goes for civilians and life in general. Maybe the cycles aren't so pronounced, but they're there. I married the most beautiful girl in the world, my children were born, I won awards, and everyone laughed at my jokes. And on the down swings people got sick, close friends and family died, and I didn't even have the wit to make a joke.  
  
I guess what I'm trying to say is that life makes no sense in a really rhythmical way. You know there are going to be good and bad times, but you don't know when. Life is full of unexplained coincidences, both good and bad. As a good friend of mine once said "have you followed the way I've drifted?  
  
This is just a really long letter saying that I have no answers. But you knew that anyway. If I could make your fear go away I would. I can't truly understand your fear at the present because I can't imagine any terrorist cells would target Crabapple Cove, but I have understood that fear in the past.  
  
My mother died when I was very young, and that was my first real glimpse of death. That was a more personal realization of mortality and I know you've had a similar experience. Death is one of the scariest things you have to come to terms with as a human being, and I wish I could help you out. As I said before, you have no right to be wrestling with these issues at your age and on such a wide scale.  
  
You said something else that really touched me. Something about feeling claustrophobic, as if you cannot escape the uncertainty of life's course and the certainty of its end. You also said that you knew I would understand that. I do. I think that along with the looks and the humor, you also inherited my fears. Sorry about that. I used to get that feeling all the time, especially in Korea. The feeling that the world isn't big enough. I'd lie at night staring at the roof of my tent my heart pounding, trying to talk myself out of it. I felt trapped in a way that no one else really understood. No matter what I did, or who I touched, I would still die, and that would be it. I couldn't escape it, and that's what claustrophobia's really all about. I hope that me telling you my experiences doesn't scare you more, but helps you to feel that you're not alone.  
  
In some ways I'm glad that you're so much like me, and in other's I'm not. I wish you weren't such a thinker. It would make things one hell of a lot easier on you. But the thinking people, though sometimes the most tortured, are also the most rewarded. I'm sorry again that I can't give you any real answers but maybe my experiences can help you to formulate your own theories.  
  
Don't stop dreaming. That's the goal of these murderers. Don't live so much in the present that you forget to look into your future. It's hard, when you keep thinking "but there may be no tomorrow". But try and reverse that and think, "what if there is a tomorrow." I'm sort of throwing a stone in a glass house on this one, but it's worth a shot.  
  
I would love to hear from you again. It was great to get your letter. You need to come up and visit sometime, all of your friends up here are asking for you. Your Grandma included.  
  
Hang in there Madison, I love you:  
  
~ Grandpa 


End file.
